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Reporters at the Monthly JoongAng magazine are up in arms after the magazine at the 11th hour pulled an article on Choeng Wa Dae¡¯s investigation of National Security Council deputy chief Lee Jong-seok it had meant to run in its June edition and pulped the already printed pages.
The reporters met on May 20 and demanded that management take responsibility for the financial losses and damaged image resulting from the move and make sure this never happens again.
The June edition was to have featured a piece on the secret investigation of the KNSC deputy chief ordered by NSC chairman Chung Dong-young in early April, apparently in connection with negotiations with the U.S. over a military operational plan Seoul later binned. The magazine distributed a summary of the story ahead of publication which some daily papers even quoted in their reports. Yet when the magazine came out on May 18, one day later than originally scheduled, there was no sign of the article.
The magazine on Wednesday denied rumors it pulped the article under pressure from the KNSC. "The government through the covering reporter expressed its opinion that ahead of [a June 11 summit] between North Korea and the U.S., the national interest should come first, but there was no outside pressure,¡± it said. ¡°It was our own decision to remove the piece."
It also dismissed a report in Media Today that the Monthly JoongAng reprinted the June edition after destroying tens of thousands of previously printed copies. "The printing was completed, but since the magazines weren't bound yet, it's not true that we destroyed tens of thousands of copies,¡± the magazine said. ¡°Because we only had to reprint those parts that included the 13-page article, the financial losses weren't great."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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